Stone - Or, A Rock & a Hard Place
by CeeCeeSings
Summary: A short, melancholy one-off after viewing S4 E4. This very likely is my Caryl FF swan song.


Stone – Or, A Rock & a Hard Place

**A/N: Hear that sound? It may be the sound of a shark jumping over a zombie. I have the warmest of warm spots in my heart for TWD, but I am not sure what the heck's going on this season. Love the focus on characterization; don't love the bizarre, nearly-random nature of that characterization. TWD has always been more than zombies and guts because of the characters, and I don't know them anymore. I feel very strongly that this one-off is my TWD/Caryl fanfic swan song…perhaps that sound is really of the fat lady singing.**

**A/N, Updated: Hey lovely readers and reviewers...I am not overly sad! I just don't really write non-canon fic, regardless of the source material, and I don't feel that Caryl is realistically canon anymore. Hence all this swan song stuff...thanks for the journey!**

She doesn't look in the rearview mirror, through the shimmer of her unshed tears. There's no point. Rick's not following her. No one is. She is alone. Carol feels it: like a stone tossed into a lake, she is slowly sinking, the life she's known that past year and a half drifting away, becoming hazy and indistinct, with each mile that clicks on the odometer. The drifting is terrifying yet peaceful.

Like flotsam and jetsam, the memories of her life – her life _before_, and her life _after_ – flutter by, swirling in eddies around the little discarded stone that she is.

_Lizzie, her giant brown eyes staring up at Carol through the pane of glass between them, searching for comfort: "Yes, mom…I mean, ma'am." _

_"Don't call me 'mom.'" _

_She hears her own voice, knowing that the girl cannot understand the layers of grief and regret and love and loss that have formed around that nearly-forgotten word, seeking to bury it in calcified memory. _

She swipes at tears she hardly knows are falling down her cheeks, brushing them away with stoic indifference. They are incidental, at best. Residue from how she has lived, up until now. Another memory drifts past her, a wet leaf in the current of calm.

_She kneels in the dusty, sun-blasted prison yard, her knife hovering over the corpse of the female walker at her side. _

_She must do this. Her knife hesitates. _

_She MUST do this. She cannot hesitate. Lori's life may count on it. _

_She plunges the knife into the strong muscle of the walker's useless uterus, carefully slicing it open, carefully willing her breakfast to stay in her roiling stomach. For Lori. _

But her friend died anyway. And Carol had been no help to her, nearly dying herself from her own carelessness and inability to protect herself. So she had committed her mother's heart to her dead friend's child.

_Leaning over Judith's makeshift bassinet, brushing the wispy brown hair away from the soft, fragile skull. So easy to lose her, in an instant. Carol's heart clenches at the thought, knowing that loss is always right around the corner. Hasn't she learned? Loss is the only thing that could be counted on: her daughter, her friend, her…Daryl, leaving with Merle, the only thing left of him now was the weight in her heart and his nickname for Judith written on the side of her tiny bed. Understanding why he went made it easier, but there was a still a gaping hole in her heart where he used to be. _

All of these things, swirl around her head and she moves further and further away from the known, into the unknown. Down the road littered with the dead and memories of humanity, scattered and torn. She sighs deeply. _Daryl. _

_Of all of them, of anything, he has taught her the certainty of loss. And the value of love, on her own terms. _

_Standing in the doorway of the spare bedroom in Hershel's farmhouse, staring down at the crisscross of scars on his back, his mussed hair sticking out from the bandages on his head. Something makes her do it: for herself, and for him. Brushing the lightest of kisses across his forehead, smelling the sweaty, dirty musk of him, and how that smell sends a jolt through her heart and loins. Something wholly unexpected. _

_Something that grows, each day, despite their inability to really understand it. _

_Something that just…is._

She will miss his sleep-puffed face when he seeks out coffee from her in the mornings. She will miss watching him slowly become a leader, of sharing that leadership with him. She will miss standing in perfect, silent harmony with him, as the dead claw the fences and the sun stains the sky orange. She will miss what was, and what may have been.

But happiness isn't just about not being alone.

She realizes she isn't crying anymore. Her mouth turns up in a half-smile. She presses on the gas, drives a little faster down the road, to whatever may come.

oooOOOooo

He sits in the passenger seat, looking in the rearview mirror, sweeping the road behind them with his eyes, looking for threats. He rolls the bright green piece of jasper around on his palm, glances over at Michonne, whose face bursts into that sunny, unexpected smile she has. He grins back, unable to help himself.

He's not sure when he found the capacity to care so much about people, but now it's a part of him. He wonders, at times, why he tried to fight it for so long. Then he absentmindedly rubs his shoulder, feels the raised scars, or hears the echoing rasp of Merle's jibes, and remembers why.

He sits in silence, stewing a bit about Bob and his exemption from responsibility, mostly understanding that he once was there: a man who felt responsible only for himself and for his blood. But Daryl is now tied fundamentally to these people, to others.

He knows how to love, now. There is no happiness in being alone.

He hopes the supplies they've found are enough, and that they return in time to save everyone. He worries about Hershel, Judith, Carl. About Carol.

He looks closely at the small piece of mineral in his grimy palm, considers it. Maybe later, after they've taken care of the sick and nursed them back to health, he'll show her the lovely, imperfect stone.

They can share the unexpected beauty of it. Together.


End file.
